Rare Two-Headed Porpoise Caught in North Sea

It has become some sort of a commonly-known fact that fishermen catch all kinds of bizarre things from the ocean. From shoes to garbage and from fishes to sharks. However, some Dutch fishermen almost crossed the fantasy realm when they realized what they caught in the North Sea, just last month. The weird creature they were looking at turned out to be a two-headed porpoise. More precisely, a set of conjoined twins which shared one single body. They were also newborns and sadly, already dead when the fishermen caught it. Because they feared that it would be illegal to keep the mammal and bring it to the shore, they threw it back to the sea. However, before doing that, they took some photos of the small creature.

A bizarre creature

The photos from the fishermen eventually reached Dr. Erwin Kompanje from the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam. And even if he has been studying all sorts of sea creatures for over 20 years like dolphins, whales and porpoises, he admitted that he has never seen anything like this. According to him, this two-headed creature is “extremely rare”. This is mainly because cetaceans rarely give birth to twins. Conjoined twins are almost non-existent. To further prove how rare they are, he said that out of the 700,000 porpoises in the world, this was the first case of conjoined twins in history.

Nine other cases of conjoined twins in cetacean species have been registered. The latest one dates from back in 2014 when people found a set of conjoined dolphin twins, which shared the same body. They reportedly washed ashore in western Turkey. As for the reason why all these creatures are dead when someone finds them is because of their incapacity to swim. Their unusual anatomy prevents them from swimming properly and after a while, they inevitable die.

An extremely rare specimen

Kompanje also said that it’s a pity that the fishermen threw the mammal back into the sea. The unusual specimen could have provided more insight into the creature’s anatomy. He was especially curious about the mammal’s spinal musculature which in cetaceans is very developed. This happens because they use their spinal column in order to swim.